The Imitation Game
by Wolfie-Dragon
Summary: One-shot. For as long as she could remember, Matt had been more than just a brother to Pidge. He was also her best friend. She couldn't imagine a world where he doesn't exist. So when Pidge loses her brother, she can't help but try to bring him back the only way she knows how. But she plays a dangerous game, one where the lines between imagination and reality blur.
1. The Imitation Game

Pidge took a deep breath, forcing herself to stay calm, before dropping out of the vent as quietly as she could. Luckily neither of the guards looking out the window heard her, and she was able to sneak up behind them.

Thankfully they were robots. Those were easier to kill. Well, they were harder to stun and decapitate, but at least they didn't scream. But even if they had been living Galra or some other race, Pidge would still jump up to push one of them down with her shield while slicing the other's throat with her bayard. Before the first could reach around her shield she hit the vulnerable access port with her bayard and delivered a high-voltage charge, enough to fry every circuit in the robot's servos.

Pidge tried not to think about the fact that if they had been Galra, blood would be pouring out of one of their throats, while the other would smell like burned flesh, twitching all the while, the electricity triggering the nerves and muscles even in death.

Robots were much easier to deal with than people. Whether it was talking to them, or killing them.

"Clear," she said, forcing herself to focus on the mission. Her most important mission yet. A few seconds later the other paladins jumped over the wall with their jetpacks and crossed the now unguarded courtyard.

" _Looks like they don't know we're here yet,"_ Hunk said over her headset, and Pidge answered with a short "Uh-huh," as she quickly re-entered the vent and climbed down to the lower levels. That had been just one level of the prison complex, and they still had several to go.

"Okay, three guards in the corridor to your right, Lance. Two to your left, Keith," Pidge half-listened to the instructions coming in from Allura, who was supervising the attack from the Castle. They had dropped the BLIP-tech sensors again, giving them the location of everybody in the facility. Pidge wouldn't let herself be distracted when the other paladins briefly got lost and needed Allura's directions to the correct staircase, focusing instead on getting through the maze of vents. Second left, fourth right, down one floor, out at the end of the vent.

Just as she neared the exit of the vents a loud _"Shit!"_ came out of her headset, and it was followed by sounds of gunfire.

" _We've been spotted!"_

" _Why didn't you tell us about that guy?!"_

" _You opened the wrong door,_ _idiot_ _!"_

" _Shut up, everyone, and focus!"_

Pidge's breath quickened when all the paladins started talking at once, and she picked up the pace, slicing open the grate and dropping out as a siren started blaring.

No, no, no, no, no! She had to get to the cells now! Who knows what the Galra would do to stop the prisoners from escaping? But she was in the wrong part of the building, she was supposed to disable the cameras from the control room while the others freed the prisoners.

Time for Plan B.

Pidge began running through the halls, thankfully not encountering any enemies.

" _Hunk, cover our_ _rear_ _. Lance, take out that sniper!_ _Keep moving!_ _"_ Shiro seemed to be rallying the paladins.

" _Pidge._ _Three_ _guards in the next hallway, running away from you towards the others!"_ Allura said, and Pidge didn't hesitate, rounding the corner and stabbing the first robot in the back. The others hadn't noticed her yet, and she didn't waste any time in disposing of them as well, cursing when the last one spilled blood all over her wrist when she grabbed him from behind and slit his throat. No time to think about that, there were prisoners she had to free. One prisoner in particular.

" _Hurry! The number of life signs from the cells is decreasing!"_ Coran's voice shouted over the comms, and suddenly Pidge was running faster than she thought possible. She rounded the last corner and spotted the other paladins hunkered down at the cell door.

"Pidge! You made it!" Lance said as she ran towards them. Hunk was covering one end of the hallway, Lance the other, using makeshift barricades of tables, while Keith and Shiro were trying to break down the door.

"Let me!" she shouted when she reached the door, pushing Keith out of the way to get to the control panel. Immediately she cut open the covering and plugged in the hacking tool on her wrist.

"Come on," she whispered as the tiny computer started finding the correct access code, trying to focus on the circuitry while ignoring the blaring alarm system.

"We're not detecting any life signs from inside the cells anymore!" Coran shouted, and it took a moment for her to realize what that meant. No, that couldn't be true. She just had to open the door, and she'd find him alive and well.

Suddenly the hacking tool bleeped and emitted a green light, and then the door opened.

"Masks on! Now!" Shiro shouted, and she wasted no time making the helmet airtight, as if she were in the vacuum of space. She unplugged the tool and looked up to see the door opening, a massive cloud of yellow gas pouring out and surrounding the paladins.

Some part of Pidge knew that it was over, that this was poison gas and that nobody could still be alive in there. But she refused to believe that. So she pushed Shiro out of the way and blindly ran into the large cell.

As soon as she ran through the doorway she tripped over something. She instinctively rolled and jumped back to her feet, before turning around, trying to peer through the now thinning gas as it poured out into the hallway.

The scene that appeared nearly made her vomit in her helmet. Dozens of alien bodies were piled up at the door, arms outstretched, hands resting on the wall and lying on the threshold. They had clearly tried to break open the door in their final seconds. If only she had been faster…

"No, no, no, no, no," she muttered as she frantically looked around the room, seeing more and more bodies covering the floor and sprawled against the walls. No, please don't let him be here, please let him be alive somehow, please!

Then she spotted the mop of light brown hair, and her heart stopped for a moment.

"Matt!" she shouted as she ran over to the only human body in the cell, before grabbing him and turning him over.

She barely recognized him. His skin had turned gray, bloody foam and bits of flesh were pouring out of his mouth. His bloodshot, bulging eyes stared at her in an expression of pure horror and pain.

"No! Come on, we've got to get him to the infirmary! We can heal him!" she screamed as she tried to pick up the body. But then Shiro put his hands on her shoulders and stopped her.

"He's gone, Pidge. There's nothing we can do for him anymore. I'm sorry," he said.

* * *

Pidge was running, not caring where she was going. She just knew that she had to get out of there. Away from the other paladins who couldn't look her in the eye. Away from Lance's guilt-stricken face, and his endless apologies for opening the wrong door and causing them to be detected.

Away from Matt's lifeless body, floating in a cryopod. _"This way we can preserve him,"_ Coran had said. As if he could be preserved. His lungs were gone, his skin was peeling off. Sometime during their escape from the prison one of his eyes had fallen out. She didn't remember leaving. The last thing she remembered was hugging Matt's lifeless body in that dirty prison cell while the others tried to calm her.

The next memory was Hunk putting Matt's body in the cryopod. All the time in between was blank. Somehow the sound of freezing air had woken her up, and made her realize what had just happened.

Then Lance had started apologizing, and Allura was rambling, and everybody was offering their condolences, and she had to get away from it.

So now Pidge ran. Corridor after corridor, room after room. None of the others were coming after her, thankfully. She only stopped when she couldn't see anymore, her heavy breathing and tears misting the visor of the still airtight helmet. With trembling hands she opened the helmet and tore it off, tossing it away without caring where it went, taking deep breaths of the clean air.

When her breathing had gone back to normal, Pidge opened her eyes, immediately blinking at the bright light of the computer lab. Somehow she had ended up here. Her eyes hurt from trying to focus without her glasses, and without thinking she raised a gloved hand to rub at them.

Something red entered her vision, and she recoiled when she saw the bloodstains on her wrists. Whose blood was this? How much of it was from the Galra she killed, and how much was her brother's blood?! Her breathing quickened, and Pidge felt panic overwhelm her as the memories of Matt's bleeding body resurfaced. She tore at the vambraces, trying to claw them off, to get the blood away from her. She finally managed to get her right vambrace off, and she threw it away, panic only increasing when it hit a monitor with a loud bang.

She had to get it away from her! If she couldn't see the blood, it wouldn't be real. None of this could be real. It couldn't be. Her brother could not be gone. Matt could not be gone. The other vambrace went off next, knocking a keyboard off a table when she threw it away.

Matt had always been there for her. Matt had never let her down. Even when no one in her entire school wanted anything to do with the 'freak with the robot brain', he had been there for her. Playing chess with her even though she always won. Comforting her after another day of bullying. Playing their silly imitation game, where they'd pretend to be the other sibling and see how many people they could fool. He had always treated her as a normal human being, unlike the teachers who only saw a future Einstein they could shape, or the kids who called her a weird robot.

That Matt couldn't be gone. It couldn't be. That… _thing_ in the cryopod couldn't be him. He couldn't be dead.

Pidge looked down and nearly vomited when she saw more blood on her armor. She covered her face with her hands, not wanting to see the proof of Matt's death.

It couldn't be possible that he'd never hug her again, and tell her that everything would be alright. It couldn't be possible that they would never play their game again. Even when he went missing, she hadn't felt this alone. He had always been somewhere in the universe, and she just had to find him. Finally she had gained an outlet for her big brain, knowing that if she just thought hard enough and invented the right tools, she would save him.

But now… How could she find him? How could her brain fix this?

Finally, she looked up, and her eyes fell on the memory analyzer on the other side of the room. It was a marvel of Altean engineering, a machine that could take any memory from your brain and replay it. Coran had showed it to her, letting her traverse a memory of Altea. It had seemed so real, and she had been able to listen to Coran's grandfather talk. For a moment she had forgotten the old man had been dead for the last ten thousand years. The urge to relive such an experience grew stronger.

Why not? She just wanted to see him. His body intact. His voice comforting her. His arms around her.

Slowly, feeling like she was dreaming, she walked over to the large computer and put the helmet on. Then she chose the first memory she could think of, and focused on reliving it. A moment later a purple drop fell in the jar, telling her that it had worked. Now she just had to replay it.

Pidge pressed the blue button on the console, and suddenly the lights changed. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes she was in a suburban street.

The perspective moved quickly, making it look like she was running, even though her legs weren't moving. Giggling filled the air. She ran around a corner and jumped through a small hole in a hedge.

"Katie! Did you do it?" Matt's voice asked, and Pidge nearly collapsed with joy. Her brother was standing right there, barely ten feet away. He was shorter than he had been when he left on the space mission. His belated growth spurt had not yet started.

"Matt!" Pidge shouted as she ran over to hug him. But when she reached him her arms went right through him, and his eyes weren't focused on her. They remained focused on the center of the room. Of course, it was just a hologram. It seemed so real.

"Yeah! Did you do your part? I bet Mrs. Crawford will be here in thirty seconds," a voice sounding quite like Pidge said. Pidge stood aside, noting that Matt's back was blank, since it hadn't been a part of this memory. Matt's eyes kept looking at the center of the room, where the young Katie had been standing.

"Yes, I've been here mowing the grass. Now let's see if she fell for it!" Matt said, and then he and the perspective were moving again, as Katie went back to the hole in the hedge, peeking out into the street. An older lady who looked very angry was marching up to the front door of the Holt house, right next to the hedge. Matt and Katie stayed in the shadows, trying to keep their giggling down, while Mrs. Crawford rang the bell.

"Can I help you?" Pidge recognized her mother's voice, even though she couldn't see her from this perspective. She walked around, trying to see, but the front of the house was blank and invisible.

"Your son just threw eggs at my house!" the old lady shouted.

"That's impossible! He's been here all day, working the lawn. Isn't that right, Mr. Levine?" Pidge's mother called out to a man walking his dog.

"Oh yes, I saw him less than a minute ago!" the man said as he walked over, the dog barking happily as if agreeing.

"But I saw him do it! He was wearing those big glasses, and that blue shirt with the rocket on it! It was definitely your Matthew!" the woman shouted angrily. Mr. Levine shrugged.

"Well, I just saw him here. He couldn't have been in two places at once, could he?" he said, and Katie and Matt giggled.

The perspective changed again as the siblings moved away from the hedge and further into the back yard.

"I can't believe they fell for it again! You're way too good at pretending to be me!" Matt said, and Pidge heard herself giggle.

"It's not that hard. I just have to act really dorky and stupid! Then it's just a matter of wearing your clothes and putting my hair up," Katie said, making Matt scowl.

"Is that so? Well then, how about I pretend to be you tomorrow, eh? See if Ms. Shen can tell it's not really you solving Rubik's cubes during class," the boy said.

Without warning the lights flashed, and suddenly Pidge was standing in the computer lab again. The memory was over. She smiled.

It was nice to remember the game they played. It was so easy, with both of them being so short, having the same hair color, and a nearly identical voice. Only when Matt had his growth spurts and shot up to be a foot taller than her did it become impossible. So she grew her hair out, regaining her feminine appearance, only to cut it and wear Matt's clothes again when she had to infiltrate the garrison, playing the imitation game in a much more serious setting.

Pidge remembered her joy of reading an essay written by Alan Turing, her favorite computer scientist. ' _Computing Machinery and Intelligence'_ the essay was called, and in it Turing proposed his famous intelligence test for computers, the Imitation Game, or Turing test. She had laughed when she first read Turing's explanation of an old game where an examiner text-chatted with two people sitting in different rooms, and had to determine who was the boy, and who was the girl. It was so similar to their own game, and she felt a… connection of sorts to the great mathematician, for having played the same game.

Turing then went on to describe a similar game, where an examiner chatted with an entity he couldn't see, then answer if he had communicated to a human being or a computer. If a computer consistently passes as human, it deserves to be called intelligent, Turing argued.

Pidge sighed, remembering so many times Matt and her played their game. They had swapped places for hours at a time, doing each others tests during school, playing pranks on the neighbors in the afternoon, fooling even their parents during the evening.

Then it hit her, and she collapsed into the nearest chair.

They would never play that game ever again. Matt is dead. Dead and gone. No more games. Never.

She buried her head in her hands, crying for what must have been hours. Eventually her tears ran dry, and she stood up from the chair, groaning when her sore muscles protested.

Her eyes fell on the memory analyzer again, and she remembered her discussion with Coran about it. After showing her the memory, Coran had explained that one could upload their entire brain structure to create a perfect artificial intelligence copy of that person. It was what King Alfor had done. But it would only work with a living brain. Matt's brain was dead. Then she remembered the rest of what Coran had said:

" _I suppose that if it's someone you know very well, you could still make an AI for them. You could put in memories of your own in the computer. You could enter data about them, factoids and history and anecdotes. Then the computer would mash them together and try to create the best copy it can of that person. Of course, it would be incomplete. I doubt I could truly recreate my grandfather, for instance. But it could be a convincing copy. Who knows, it might even pass your Turing test!"_

An idea grew in her mind as she looked at the computers and analyzers. Why not? It would be better than living in a world where Matt didn't exist.

A small part of her brain said that this was a bad idea, that she should move on, but she had found an intellectual challenge that she couldn't resist in that moment. Succeeding at the Turing test and playing their game in one fell swoop.

Time to play the imitation game again. In her youth, she had played the old version, pretending to be a boy to fool neighbors and teachers. This time it would be the Turing test, with her playing both sides of the board at the same time. She had to create an AI so powerful it would convince herself that it was a human being.

Specifically, a boy named Matthew Holt.

* * *

Pidge's hands were trembling. She kept scratching at her hair, and she was so nervous she felt like she was going to throw up.

It was time. Weeks of work, all leading up to this day. She had spent all her spare time uploading every single memory she had of Matt into the machine. She had removed all the memories from after his mission started, though, afraid that any indication that Matt was dead would weaken the AI.

In addition to that she had also uploaded every fact she knew of him, from his favorite food (spaghetti) to his least favorite color (purple). She had also done her best to optimize the AI generator, making it faster and more reliable. Luckily she had fiddled with the code before… the prison raid happened, so she didn't have to ask Coran about it.

Pidge hadn't seen Coran much these last three weeks. Nor the other paladins. They mostly let her have her space and didn't bother her. Only Shiro had come to her one night, while everyone else was asleep. They talked about Matt for hours, exchanging stories and memories. He had held her while she cried again, and then she held him while he cried.

She had almost told him of her plans, of the personality replicator. Shiro would have been able to help. His memories would have been invaluable for creating Matt's replica. But she didn't dare. Something told her that Shiro wouldn't have agreed. That he would think it was wrong. Maybe he was right. But she had come so far, and she was so close now that she wouldn't stop. She couldn't stop. Not until she had talked to Matt again. Re-watching her memories wasn't enough, she needed to speak to him directly.

And now it was time. All the data was uploaded and processed, all the algorithms optimized. The only thing left was running the program.

"Computer, run program: _Personality Replicator_. Target personality… M-Matthew Holt," she said, her voice trembling at the end.

The computer beeped loudly, and she closed her eyes. Bright light pierced her eyelids, but she refused to open them until the computer was done creating a new environment. It beeped again, and she opened her eyes.

She was standing in the back yard of her house. The hedges rustled in the wing, and birds sung in the trees. On the other side of the house a car drove past, tires slipping on the tarmac.

Pidge felt like she was ten years old again, waiting for her brother to show up so they could plan another prank. Only the bayard on her belt reminded her that she was older now.

"Katie?" Matt's voice suddenly called out, and Pidge spun around, relief washing over her when she saw Matt standing right there.

"Matt! You're… How have you been?" she managed to ask, too shocked to move. It worked! He looked so real, and his voice was just like she remembered it!

I'm great! I hear you're a paladin now, eh? Riding lions and meeting aliens! That's so cool! I knew you'd do amazing things!" he said, and she blushed. She had missed this so much. Matt talking to her, congratulating her on her achievements. And now she had him again.

"It's… It's nothing… the others are doing much more than I am. The Alteans have such cool technology, though!" she said, and Matt smiled.

"I hope you didn't forget our Earth games while burying your head in even more books! Let's play chess," Matt laughed as he gestured at a chessboard lying on the grass, before sitting down on the white side. Pidge eagerly followed. It had been so long since she played chess. She had 3D-printed her own pieces, but none of the other paladins dared to play with her, and Coran and Allura didn't know the rules.

They played in silence for a while. Pidge preferred the silence during chess, it helped her to concentrate.

She fistpumped when Matt left his rook undefended, not noticing her bishop, but as she moved to take the rook she felt a strong sense of _déjà vu._ She had done this move before. Their last game before Matt left he had made this exact same mistake. Pidge's hand, still holding the bishop, was frozen as she quickly surveyed the board. It was exactly the same. Matt had made the exact same moves.

"Seems like you didn't learn anything from our last match. You're still losing as always. It's not very exciting if you make the exact same moves," she said as she took the rook off the board. Matt froze for a moment, before sighing and looking at the board for a very long time.

Suddenly his hand moved his queen forward, right into the middle of her pieces. Pidge frowned. That was an unusual move for Matt. Usually he played much more defensively. But she refused to show her surprise, so she simply made her own move, trying to trap the queen.

She was so focused on the biggest white piece that she didn't notice the rest of the board, and she cursed out loud when Matt suddenly moved his own bishop to take her queen.

What was happening here? Matt had never played this well! She gritted her teeth and killed the bishop, before surveying the board, making sure to analyze all of Matt's possible plays for at least 4 moves ahead.

Pidge still didn't see his endgame coming, when he used his knight and rook to kill her bishops, and somehow sneaking a pawn across the board when she had to defend her king. Finally she saw an opportunity, and with a triumphant yell she took his queen with her knight.

"Checkmate," Matt said calmly, as he moved his knight to threaten her king. Her jaw dropped. He had actually trapped her king. She actually lost. Matt had never beaten her. He had never played anywhere near this good. How could this have happened? After she had teased him about his identical game he had played perfectly. Like the chess computers she used to compete with.

Her hands balled into fists, and she pressed her teeth together not to scream. She was supposed to be good at chess! She was supposed to beat Matt! This was wrong!

Her anger must have shown, because Matt suddenly pouted.

"What's wrong? Are you angry that you lost?" he asked in a patronizing voice that only made her angrier. Matt hadn't treated her like this since he beat her at Monopoly that one time when they were little.

"No," she muttered, knowing he'd see right through it. He sighed, before standing up.

"Come on, let's play something else then. Let's play the imitation game! See if we can fool Mrs. Crawford again!" he said, and she shook her head.

"We can't play that game anymore, you're way taller than me now!" she said, and Matt laughed.

"No, I'm not! Look!" he exclaimed, and she stood up. Weird. He was indeed the same height as her. He seemed way shorter than when he left. And hadn't he been taller just a minute ago?

"When did you shrink?" she asked, frowning, and he shrugged.

"I've always been this tall, you must be remembering wrong," he said, and she felt a flare of annoyance, unsure of how to respond to such blatant… lies? His voice was convincing, and she couldn't argue with her eyes, but she _knew_ he was taller than her.

"Fine, let's just drop it. How was your mission to Kerberos, anyway?" she asked, using the first conversation topic she could think of.

"I… uh…" Matt suddenly seemed lost for words, and she frowned. Matt wasn't one to stutter.

"I… I don't remember much. It was cool! Loads of cool soil samples! And I ate a lot of peas," he suddenly started rambling, and Pidge felt like something was wrong. There was something missing, but she couldn't think of what.

"Yeah, we got the soil samples, and went back home! And now you're home too, and we're together again. Now let's prank Mrs. Crawford!" Matt said, but she shook her head. This wasn't right.

"What? I didn't go home!" she said, and Matt laughed.

"Stop being weird, don't you see we're back home again? Now let's go!" he said, and she started taking steps backwards, suddenly wary of her brother. Something was very wrong. There was something she was forgetting, it was on the tip of her tongue, but what was it? He _was_ here. She _was_ standing in her back yard on Earth. But then why did it feel so wrong? She had to think.

"I… I have to go," she said as she turned to the hole in the hedge.

"What? You don't have to go! Stay here, with me! Don't you want to play with me anymore? Too busy fighting Galra to spend time with your brother?!" Matt said angrily, and suddenly it all came flashing back.

The Galra. Infiltrating the garrison. The hostages in the ship on Ares. The prison. The poison gas. Matt's dead body. Her plan. How could she have forgotten? Was she this drawn in by the illusion?

"No! Get away from me!" she shouted, staggering away from him.

"Please, Katie! Just stay here, with me! We can play forever! I'm right here! I'm your brother!" Matt said as he moved towards her, and she kept moving back.

"No! No, that's wrong! You're not!" she shouted, before taking a deep breath. She had to be calm. She couldn't let this… thing… overwhelm her.

"My brother was taken by the Galra. My brother is… dead," she stated clearly as she took her bayard from her belt and turned it on.

"No I'm not, Katie, I'm right here!" he said, but she shook her head.

"No, you're not here. I'm not Katie anymore. I'm Pidge now. And Matt is dead, and his body is in a cryopod. You're not my brother," she said. The boy lunged towards her, trying to grab her, and by reflex she moved her bayard forward.

The glowing knife entered his stomach. They both froze, before looking down. The blade was deeply embedded in his body, but Pidge didn't feel any resistance. A loud beep rang out, and then she was blinded by a sudden burst of bright light.

When Pidge managed to open her eyes again, Matt was gone. The garden had disappeared, and she was standing in the computer lab again. Her chess pieces were on a nearby table, the black king still trapped.

She dropped her bayard when she was suddenly overcome with exhaustion, and she leaned on the nearby memory analyzer.

 _Error: Simulated personality killed,_ the console said, and she shook her head.

"Turing test failed," she muttered, trying not to cry. She had been a fool. She had been so close, it had nearly convinced her. She wasn't sure if she was glad or disappointed that it hadn't worked. Matt couldn't be replaced, she knew that now, but still… it had felt so comforting to forget for a while.

"I think _you_ passed a test, though," a voice suddenly said, and Pidge whipped her head up to see Coran entering the computer lab. Did he know what she did?

"You saw through the illusion, and did what you had to. I was about to interfere, but you broke out yourself," Coran said as he walked over and patted her shoulder. Pidge just covered her face with her hands.

"You knew? For how long?" she softly asked.

"About two weeks. I have to manage these computer systems, I know what you upload. It wasn't hard to put two and two together," he said, and she groaned.

"You must think I'm so stupid," she whispered.

"No, I think this is something you had to do. You did much better than the Princess, she keeps going back to King Alfor, not truly accepting that he is dead. She's amazing, but sometimes she's denser than an Altean bullhorn," Coran said, and she shrugged, still unable to face him.

"I just… I don't know what to do without Matt," she softly admitted, and Coran sighed.

"Well, remember your father is still out there, and the Galra have to be defeated," he said, before gently taking her hands and pulling them away from her tear-stricken face.

"And your brother isn't gone. Yes, you can't truly bring him back with this Altean computer, but there's still a perfect copy of him in that greatest computer of all," he said as he lifted her chin to make her face him. "In your brain. He is right there, inside you," he whispered as he put his finger on her temple, and she wasn't sure whether to laugh or sob. She settled for a mixture of both, before putting her arms around Coran's waist.

"Thanks, Coran," she whispered, and he ruffled her hair.

They stood there for a while, Coran letting her ride out her emotions and exhaustion. Eventually they disentangled, and sat down next to the chessboard.

"And Pidge? If you ever want to play a game, you can teach me to play this. Cheese? Was that what it's called? It seemed interesting when I watched you and the computer play it," he said, and she smiled.

"It's called chess. One player controls the white pieces, the other the black pieces. A pawn can move like this…" she started explaining, feeling like a load had fallen from her shoulders. It was nice to explain and talk to a real person again, not an imitation.

And… she had pretended to be her brother often enough. She could keep him alive inside her, she was sure of it. Maybe she couldn't fool herself, but she could still fool the rest of the world. Maybe when she'd go back to Earth, she could play their imitation game again, on her own, without needing her brother.

She couldn't wait to see if Mrs. Crawford would still be angry if she threw eggs at her house.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it! If you do, please leave a review or send me a PM.**


	2. The Little Paladin

**A/N: I am mostly happy with how The Imitation Game turned out, but there was a scene in there that I initially planned, but eventually cut out and reduced to a small comment. Just before Pidge uses the personality replicator she thinks about how Shiro came to her one night and they talked about Matt. So I decided to write that scene and post it as a separate chapter. I hope you like it. I might write other part later, with the other paladins and how they reacted to the events of the prison raid.**

* * *

Small amounts of yellow gas escaped from the closed cell door. Shiro leaned closer to examine it. A whiff of it entered his mouth, and suddenly his throat was burning. He recoiled just as Pidge's hacking device bleeped, and the door opened. In a flash he realized what the gas was, and reacted immediately.

"Masks on! Now!" he shouted as he pressed the button on the underside of his helmet, making it airtight, and activated the build-in oxygen tank. The filtered air was dank, but it was better than the poison gas now pouring out of the opened door.

Then the screaming started.

Pidge screamed first, then Keith, as they clutched their throats. Then the other paladins joined in, falling to the ground and gasping for air as blood poured out of their mouths. They writhed and struggled like they were drowning in the sea of yellow gas. Shiro was frozen in horror as he watched his friends die.

"You let them die. As you let me die," a voice said, and Shiro looked up to see Matt stumble out of the cell. His skin was rotting, his eyes were white, and his face was covered in blood and foam.

"No! I tried to save them! Tried to save you!" Shiro managed to say, but then more bodies appeared behind Matt. Some were prisoners dead from poison gas, but others were aliens he killed in the arena, and even the two little Balmerians they found dead after saving the Balmera. Killed by a missed blast from one of the Voltron lions.

"No, you let us die. You killed us. And we want vengeance," the aliens said as one. Shiro stumbled back, but the dead were faster. They grabbed him and pulled him back into the cell, still filled with yellow gas, and pried his helmet off. Shiro tried to scream, tried to beg for help, but he was drowning, the gas suffocating him.

And then his eyes opened. He was panting, bathed in sweat, tangled in his bedsheets. It took a minute for his brain to catch up to what happened. Adrenaline raced through his veins, and his right arm tingled, even though he couldn't feel anything in it. He groaned and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Fifth nightmare so far since the prison raid.

There was no way he would be able to go to sleep after that, so Shiro threw the sheets off and stood up. Maybe a walk would calm him.

He didn't bother to put on his regular clothes, keeping his shorts and nightshirt on. The cold tile floor gave a nice cool sensation to his bare feet.

The castle was dark and deserted, since it was still the middle of the night. Well, there was no night or day in space, but the castle still used a 22 hour rhythm with lights and heating simulating the sun rising and falling in the sky. But even now, at a time he might have called 3 AM back on Earth, the red emergency lights still marked the edges of the corridors.

He started walking, sometimes slow, sometimes jogging, as he tried to banish the dream's images. The screams and accusations wouldn't go away. If he couldn't save Matt, then who could he save?

After a while Shiro saw a bright light in the distance. Alerted, he moved closer, seeing the white light came from a half-open door. He reached it without making a sound, and peeked inside.

It was one of the computer labs. Various screens were turned on, displaying programming code and rows of numbers. The walls of the room were lined with holographic blackboards. The blackboards were covered in writing: long formulas composed of Greek letters and other symbols, large schematics of small dots and arrows connecting them, a diagram of many circles overlapping and intersecting each other. Little numbers and symbols annotated everything. In the center was a drawing of something that looked like a brain, little lines and arrows pointing from notes and text to various parts of the drawing.

Shiro didn't understand any of it. He recognized enough of it to know they were mathematical formulas and constructs, but he had never been good at math. The math and computer systems had been Matt's job on the Kerberos mission. But even his youngest crew member had never written anything as extensive as this.

He had an inkling who had, though, and his suspicions were confirmed when Pidge appeared from behind a large machine near the far wall. The girl removed her glasses for a moment to rub at her bloodshot eyes. Thankfully she didn't look at the door, instead bending over to look at one of the screens.

Then she stepped on a little cart, pressed a few buttons, and the machine extended its legs and moved its wheels, allowing the short paladin to reach the top part of the blackboard, where she crossed out a formula and replaced it with a different one. Even from this distance Shiro could see she was tired and frustrated.

Shiro had barely seen Pidge lately. He had tried to give her space, to let her grieve for her brother. He needed some space himself as well.

But as he watched Pidge get down from the robot to check another computer screen, before shrinking one blackboard and bringing up an empty one which she quickly began to fill with another diagram, he worried. She clearly needed sleep, and he wondered how long ago it was since she ate. She hadn't been at dinner in the past few days, saying she was busy and that she'd eat by herself.

"Can't sleep?" Shiro said as he opened the door. Pidge jumped back, tripping over the cart. Shiro winced when she hit the floor with an audible thud.

"You okay? Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," he said as he ran over and grabbed her arm.

"I'm fine. And you didn't scare me! I just thought I was the only one still awake," Pidge said defensively as he pulled her to her feet. Shiro looked closer at her face. She was trembling slightly, though from nerves or exhaustion he couldn't tell.

"I sometimes walk around when I can't sleep. I'm guessing you're working?" he asked as he sat down in a nearby chair. Pidge rubbed her eyes again, looking at the computer she had been working on.

"Yeah, I have to finish this…" she mumbled, clearly not interested in him. Shiro didn't like this new Pidge at all. He understood she was grieving, but… this was a very weird way to go about it.

"What are you working on?" he asked, trying to sound as sincere and curious as possible.

"It's an AI personality repl-" Pidge stopped abruptly, making him frown. "It's just something I was playing with. The Alteans have some new techniques for machine learning, so I'm adapting our AI tricks to improve them. Neural networks, decision trees, evolutionary algorithms, that kind of stuff," she said as she moved around the room, pointing at different parts of the blackboards. Shiro had no idea what she was talking about, but he couldn't help but feel like she was hiding something.

"I barely understood half the words you just said," and Pidge made a sound almost like a giggle.

"Pidge… Is this important enough to skip sleep for? And when is the last time you ate?" he asked, noting how unfocused her eyes were.

"It's… It's… revolutionary. If I bring this stuff to Earth I'll advance science by decades. And I ate… yesterday, I think? Or was it the day before that? I'm not really hungry," she said, and Shiro's suspicions were spiked more. Pidge had always been interested in Altean tech, but she had never been this… obsessed before the prison raid.

"Maybe, but you still need to eat and sleep. It can wait-" he said, but Pidge interrupted him.

"It can't wait!" she shouted, before covering her mouth with her hands, apparently shocked by her own outburst.

"Why can't it wait? What is this? What are you doing?" he asked clearly. He hated confronting her like this, but she was acting irrational.

"It's… It's…" Pidge stuttered for a long time, apparently frozen in indecision.

"Pidge…" he started to say, but then she suddenly spoke up.

"It's… I have to work, okay?! It keeps me from thinking. When I stop to eat or sleep or rest I keep seeing him, and I don't see him when I'm working on numbers and formulas and networks, okay?! It's… I'm so tired, but I can't sleep," she rambled, as she leaned back against a blackboard and Shiro didn't really know what to say.

"This isn't the way. Matt is gone. You need to accept that. You need to grieve. I'm grieving. I miss him too. He was my friend. And I couldn't save him-" he said, but then Pidge spoke up again, as slid down to sit on the floor.

"It's my fault he's dead! I could have shut off the gas! I came out of the vents right next to the control room, remember? I was supposed to turn off the cameras, but when we were spotted I ran to the cell instead! I could have shut it off! I could have saved him!" she blurted out, and Shiro saw that she was crying underneath her hands covering her face. Her glasses fell off and landed in her lap, but she didn't seem to notice.

"It's not y-" he started to say, but she wasn't done.

"And now I don't know what to do anymore! He was my best friend! My only friend! He believed in me when no one else did! And I just… I killed him! It's my fault!" she shouted before dissolving into tears. Shiro was frozen as Pidge seemed to completely collapse, everything pouring out. She looked very small as she pulled her knees up against her chest and rocked back and forth. She looked like a little kid.

For the first time Shiro realized how _young_ Pidge was. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had known that she was the youngest. He was 25, and the other paladins were 18. All adults. But Pidge was… She was four years younger than Matt, so she had to be 14. Just a kid. A little kid who should never have had to go through so much.

A girl like her shouldn't have to think about death or war. Her biggest responsibility should be school and homework. Her biggest fear should be that her crush didn't like her back. Her biggest anger should come from high school gossip or an unfair grade. Her biggest complaint should be how boring English or history class are.

She should be convincing her parents to let her go to her first party. She should be baking brownies and seeing bad movies on Saturday nights with her friends. She should be having sleepovers and hushed giggling discussions about boys and makeup and whatever else girls talked about. She should be fantasizing about what kissing boys would be like. What kissing girls would be like. She should be rebelling and shouting and slamming doors for reasons only hormonal teenagers could understand. She should have her mom and dad to comfort her when she was sad.

A girl like her should never have to be whisked away from home to fight in life-or-death situations. She shouldn't have to learn how to fight and shoot and stab and fly. She shouldn't have to kill. She shouldn't have to fear death or injury. She shouldn't have to find her missing family.

She shouldn't have to see little dead alien children, killed by a stray bullet she might have fired. She should never have found her brother dead in a scene so gory and twisted when, back on Earth, she wasn't even allowed to watch a movie with such images. No kid should ever have to see those piles of dead bodies, twisted by poison gas like Holocaust victims or soldiers in the Great War.

Pidge was so smart, so mature sometimes that to see her reduced to the child she really was shook Shiro to his core, and he didn't know what to do. He remembered seeing documentaries about child soldiers in Africa. He had felt nothing but disgust at the men who kidnapped children, put a gun in their hands and told them to kill people.

Had he done the same thing? The blue lion had brought them all here, including her, and the entire universe depended on them, but he had never stopped to think if it was right. If they could deal with it.

"Pidge, listen to me. Are you listening? Please nod your head if you're listening," Shiro asked as he moved to sit down next to her. Slowly she nodded, her face still covered by her hands.

"I'm… I'm not going to say it's gonna be alright. I can't even imagine what you're going through. Matt was my friend too, but I know he meant way more to you. But I'm sad too. And I'm having nightmares and I feel scared and tired and I keep thinking what I could have done to save him," he said, gently moving his left arm around her shoulders, relieved when she didn't flinch away. She was still sobbing, but he could tell she was listening

"And I'm sorry. For… For not looking out for you. I promised Matt I'd do so if I made it out. But… But you want to know a secret? Matt missed you a lot too. Maybe even more than you missed him. And you know what he said to me? He said _'Katie is the smartest, bravest, best sister I could ever have imagined, and I'm sure she's doing great down there. She's probably being the_ _modern_ _Newton and revolutionizing science and solving world hunger_ _or planning a Mars colony_ _._ _And_ _I think she thinks she relies on me, but I rely on her just as much. Because I can always count on her to have my back._ _'_ _"_

"That's what he said, Pidge. Honest to God. And after we were captured, and put in a dark cell, he admitted he was scared. He was so scared, but he said that he was happy it was him in there, and not you. He said ' _Katie's gonna do great things. She'll travel the world and meet scientists and astronauts and presidents. Because she's strong enough to do it without me. And I always knew that would happen. Even before all this_ _space stuff_ _happened. She'd make some great invention and become famous and she wouldn't have time for her dumb big brother anymore. She's gonna do so much more than I could ever have done. She's gonna change the world, I'm sure of it. Even if I'm not there to see it._ _'_ _"_

Pidge started crying harder, and when he nudged her gently with his good arm she suddenly grabbed him and buried her face in his chest.

They sat there for a very long time, with Pidge drenching his shirt with tears while Shiro awkwardly patted her back and rubbed her messy, unwashed hair. He was glad she couldn't see the tears falling from his own eyes. Eventually her sobbing stopped, and she pulled out of his embrace.

"I'm sorry for being such a mess," she whispered, and Shiro shook his head.

"Don't apologize. You don't have to say anything. Just… Look, I don't know what you're working on in here, and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But if you ever want to talk or play or… or just want a hug, you can always come to me, okay? If there's anything I can do to help, you come to me. I'm not Matt, but maybe I can be a replacement big brother, okay? Does that sound good?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Okay. Thanks, Shiro. I'm… There's something…" Pidge seemed very conflicted all of a sudden, and she quickly glanced at the blackboards and machines. Shiro frowned. There was something more going on here, this wasn't just a project she did to stop thinking. But he wouldn't press her.

"Never mind. But maybe… Can you tell me some more stories of Matt? From training together, and when you went on the Kerberos mission?" she softly asked, making Shiro smile.

"Sure. If we trade. I tell a story, then you tell a story. And so on. And when it's light again we'll go to breakfast, and you're going to eat, and then you're going to sleep for the rest of the day. I'll deal with Allura," he stated. It looked like Pidge was going to argue, but then she sighed deeply and snuggled against his chest again.

"Fine. But only if you tell good stories," she said as she sat on his lap, looking like a little girl again.

Shiro started to tell the story of Matt's first bathroom visit in space, but a small part of his mind still wondered what she was planning. But maybe it was something that she had to do. Pidge might be young, but she was smart. And Matt believed in her. So he would believe in her too.


End file.
